This President Began at the Bottom : Cuban Immigrant Takes Over Top Job at Wynn Oil

Eradio T. (Tom) Jimenez could not speak English when he came to California in October, 1967. But through a friend, the Cuban expatriate got a job making automotive additives on the Azusa production line of Wynn Oil Co.

This week, Jimenez, 45, who appears to speak English very well now, took over as president of the company, a subsidiary of Fullerton-based Wynn’s International.

“I think, personally, it is a dream come true,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “This land has a lot of opportunities. It’s just up to you to take advantage. I’m very proud to be part of the country.”

Jimenez, now a naturalized U.S. citizen living in San Dimas, replaces James A. Howie, who resigned Tuesday after purchasing, for an undisclosed sum, a Wynn subsidiary which recycles industrial coolants.

Ever since he was a student at the University of Havana, from which he graduated with a degree in business, Jimenez had wanted to come to the United States. “I felt I wanted to live in a free country,” he said.

But in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, he said, nobody between the military draft ages of 14 to 27 was allowed to leave the country. So Jimenez bided his time by working his way up to vice president of finance for a Cuban sugar company.

As soon as he turned 27, he said, he asked the government for permission to leave Cuba. Seven months later, he was allowed to go to the United States, but he had to leave his wife and his daughter behind briefly.

His friend and former boss at the sugar company, Roberto Martinez, had left Cuba six years earlier and landed a job at Wynn Oil. Through Martinez, now vice president-controller of Wynn’s International, Jimenez was hired for assembly line work at the Azusa plant while he enrolled at Citrus College to learn English.

After four months on the line, Jimenez said, he moved to Wynn’s accounting department in Fullerton to handle Latin American distributors. His wife and his daughter arrived from Cuba at about the same time.

Though he is a business graduate, Jimenez said his Havana studies and training did not translate into a better job in the United States. So he enrolled at Cal State Fullerton and began taking business and English classes “to get American business knowledge and to help me improve my language.”

“Tom worked very, very hard at developing his language skills, taking writing and language classes,” said John F. Lillicrop, president of Wynn’s International.

Over the years, Jimenez rose through the corporate ladder to vice president for foreign subsidiary operations. He also managed to get the rest of his family--his parents, a brother and a sister--out of Cuba.

“One of his main strengths to me is that he is a highly organized executive,” Lillicrop said. “He homes in on the problem at hand and organizes a task force to get at the problem and solve it.”

Wynn Oil makes a variety of petrochemical products, mainly automotive engine additives, and accounts for about 25% of all Wynn’s International revenues, a company spokesman said. The parent company posted fiscal 1985 revenue of $214.4 million.